Archive for the "anime" Category

Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences by Eriko Ogihara-Schuck (McFarland, 2014) After winning an Oscar for Spirited Away, the Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films were dubbed into many languages. Some of the films are saturated with religious themes distinctive to Japanese culture. How were these themes, or […]

Apocalyptic thinking seems to be the order of the day lately. As Max Brooks, author of various zombie survival guides has said, “People have apocalypse on the brain right now…. It’s from terrorism, the war, [and] natural disasters like Katrina.” The nation with perhaps the greatest sense of apocalypse is Japan. The devastation wrought in […]

A number of items came to my attention this week that provided sustenance to my animation tastes. The Ovation TV Channel has been running a week-long series of programs devoted to the theme of animation. This has included Chuck Amuk: The Movie, a look at animator Chuck Jones known for his legendary work on Looney […]

Antonia Levi was one of the early pioneer scholars researching and writing on aspects of Japanese popular culture. She has lived in Japan, and is a fan as well as academic researcher on anime. She did graduate work at Tokyo University, holds a Ph.D. in Japanese history from Stanford, and has taught on Japanese history […]

The current issue of Wired Magazine, issue 15:11, is no newsstands and in bookstores now. The cover features the title “Manga Conquers America,” and it is worth the reader’s time who is interested in manga, or Japanese comics, and its relationship to anime, or Japanese animation. The online edition includes several features and online extras. […]

Bill Ellis is Associate Professor English and American Studies at Penn State. He is well known for his contribution to folklore studies, in particular his books that include Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (University Press of Mississippi, 2003), Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (University Press of Kentucky, 2000), and […]

Anime, or Japanese animation, is a popular form of entertainment in Japan, and it continues to attract a growing fan base in the United States. But how might American viewers best understand these expressions of Asian culture? Two articles by scholars writing on various anime films for http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/The Journal of Religion and Film (JR&F) provide […]

Philip Johnson recently made a post on “Spirituality Aspects of Anime,” based upon an article in the journal Culture and Religion. The article that Philip is interacting with was written by Jin Kyu Park and Philip’s post echos one I made on this blog previously in commenting on Park’s work. The interface between popular culture […]

My Australian friend and colleague, Philip Johnson, recently made me aware of an article that touches on an aspect of the interrelationship between religion and culture in the area of Japanese animation, known as anime. I have not seen the article yet, but hope to track it down in the near future. I had an […]